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Wednesday, 29 July 2015

Random shots of Kyoto from our January trip (finally). We were told that it was the most quiet time of the year in Kyoto when we visited, it was very cold, but it was so good. It's Kyoto afterall, how can it be not good? It was perfect.

Tuesday, 14 July 2015

Yes their main building -a beautiful 60s architecture- will be closed at the end of August and then will be demolished to be replaced to a modern high-rise building. (the hotel will remain)
If you are interested go ahead and read about this by Monocle -->http://savetheokura.com/

It's only about 12 minutes walk from my shop, so hopefully I can go back one weekend morning before it closes at the end of next month. If I can survive the heat that is though....

Just a quick walk from the Red Dot Design Museum there is this most amazing Maxwell Road Hawker Centre.
You'd really need another (or a few more) stomach while in Singapore! I sometimes get a bit worried when buying food from markets or food stalls but in Singapore they are kept amazingly clean and we were really impressed! Ros had taken us earlier to another hawker center near Ann Siang Hill called Amoy Street Food Centre where we had the best fish ball noodle soup and some curry of the type I had never tried before anywhere, they were both really delicious and we could not have tried these if not for Ros!! We were very lucky :)

At the Maxwell Road Hawker Centre we had Tian Tian Hainanese Chicken Rice and LOVED it. It was the best Singapore chicken rice we have ever tried and I can tell you that we have tried at so many places. I could eat it everyday, it was sooo good, was perfect. Once is not enough to go to each Hawker Center, we learned.

For the Chicken Rice we also tried Boon Tong Kee (thanks to the tip from Rebecca!), this place was also very special, if you prefer dining restaurant style then this is the place to go :) We tried the one in River Valley Rd as it was (kind of) close to our hotel but I want to try their other restaurant next time.

Another place that we loved from Rebecca's recommendation was YA HUA BAK KUT TEH EATING HOUSE. I had tried Bak Kut Teh once in Tokyo before but what this was completely different. 200 times better.

We also tried the black pepper crab at kind of a fancy restaurant in Orchard Road. There are too many things to try and enjoy! We also went up to a glittering place for dinner and drinks at one of those high rise buildings, it was fine, the night view of the city was amazing, but it was not really our kind of place. It was hard to tell where you are, if I didn't see Marina Bay Sands in a corner of my eye I could have thought we were somewhere in Shinjuku or Manhattan. If you know what I mean.

Reviewing and trying to finish this post I am getting hungry and now craving for some good Singaporean chicken rice.... Or another trip to Singapore! Can not wait to go back!

Now it's finally the end of my Singapore posts....! Now onto.....Kyoto trip (from January.. haaaaa!) !

Thursday, 7 May 2015

I never finished my Singapore posts and it has *again* been a long time since the last one! These are what I have been wanting to share most from my trip, favourite addresses!! Although it was a super quick trip we managed to visit some really lovely shops and had amazing food, so here they are! (I was going to include all of them together in one post but later decided to do one for shops and another for food.)

The Little Drom Store (pictured above)
As I wrote in the earlier posts (ages ago), visiting our friend Polkaros' pop-up shop was the main purpose of our trip and it was at The Little Drom Store. Since I met the two cute owners of this really charming store Antoinette and Stan when they visited my shop earlier when they were in Tokyo, I had wanted to visit their store so it was perfect! Going together with Ros was very special too :)

They had moved from Ann Siang Hill to this current location which is inside SOTA, School of the arts and it's really really nice! The store is full of unique and lovely products from stationery, homewares, jewelries, books and a lot more. They are very clever with their displays and we admired their original store fixtures! Polkaros display (seen in the second picture above) was very cute too, I could not resist some pompoms!!

After we had some good exciting moments at the Little Drom Store we all had nice cakes and tea at the next door K-Ki, the sweetest Antoinette gave us a long list of must-try local delicacies and she even took us to the Supermama - a great design store which was also in my list of want-to-go places. It was quite close from The Little Drom Store but it surely was not easy to take anyone around in the pouring rain but she so kindly did!!

We also visited the Red Dot Design Museum (again thanks to the tip from Antoinette!), where we enjoyed exploring around. The building was very interesting and it houses many little shops and offices of creative companies.

Haji Lane was fun to explore, it's lined with so many beautiful looking stores for both clothing and homewares, even spotted Tokyobike!

I really loved the Tiong Bahru district, one of the places I really wanted to visit in this area was Books Actually. It's a really great book store that is way more than just a book store, a kind of store that I wish were in my own neighbourhood. There are some more lovely independent stores around this area, Bloesem was one of them although we didn't get to go in as it was closed when we got there. Forty Hands Coffee was also in my list but it was also closing for the day. It turned out that he wonderful design team Foreign Policy Design has an office right across Books Actually, so hopefully next time we can visit them - great people & amazing work!

Maybe it's a little too touristy, but Raffle's Hotel is well worth a visit to check out the wonderful architecture and to have a glass of famous Singapore Sling at the Long Bar!

There are so many hotels in Singapore from budget to luxury, but we picked this boutique hotel called Lloyd's Inn and I'm glad we stayed here. It's located near Orchard Road so is very convenient but it's in a lovely and quiet residential area with big open space with lots of greens around the building. The best thing staying here was to wake up to the birds singing looking at the lush green view from our room in the morning! Check out their website, those beautiful photographs made me want to stay here but later it turned out that they were photographed by the very talented friend and a photographer Rebecca Toh!

Monday, 16 March 2015

Back to Singapore memories...
Looking at the photos from our Singapore trip back in November I just wish I could be here right now. I am quite happy with the way the colours came up on the film shots, I have not edited them except I did cropping on a few of them. The light was just perfect I think, and oh everywhere I looked I had to snap!

The first 3 photos are from Ann Siang Hill where our dear friend Ros took us around to (thank you Ros!). This area had a really lovely atmosphere with many nice looking shops and eateries, I would love to go back and do more exploration in Ann Siang Hill next time. Ros showed us this beautiful and quaint building with amazing mosaic work on the facade that belongs to her grandparents where she spent many weekends in her childhood days. Ros told us a little history of her family which is very interesting and I imagined the time she grew up and spent as a teenager in Singapore before she came to Tokyo 10 years ago. Very special.

From the 4th photo and below are from the Joo Chiat and around, Ros recommended this are so we took the MRT to the nearest station (which was far) and tried to walk to Joo Chiat. Without wi-fi and google map we walked up and down many directions but wondering around this residential neighbourhood was very enjoyable. Finding the street full of beautiful pastel coloured Peranakan houses after a long wondering around was a real joy! I wish I could live in one of them.... I am always fascinated by things old and beautiful with history especially interior and architecture related and it was very nice to find those things in Singapore. It was actually a little bit of a surprise to me, a good surprise, since I had imagined scenes of Singapore to be of pretty much just a modern high-rise city. But wow there are so many lovely neighbourhoods of the kinds that I love and wish to live in! I'm sure there would be lots more that I didn't get to see of course!